The present invention relates to beverage barrels or containers and, more particularly, to a wooden barrel head that resists warping.
Wine barrels, and in particular oak wine barrels, have historically been used as receptacles for storing and aging wine during the wine-making process. When wine is stored in a wooden barrel, particularly oak, a tannin flavor is imparted by wood phenolics to the wine. This enrichment generally improves the quality of the wine. It is therefore generally considered desirable to age wine in a wooden receptacle to impart sought-after characteristics into the wine. The natural properties of wood barrels also allow winemakers to subject the wine to the microoxygenation process, where gentle aeration of the wine occurs over a prolonged period. Wood barrels, however, are becoming increasingly expensive to purchase and maintain, and their high cost is at least partly due to the fact that their construction requires skilled coopers to make and repair the barrels and, moreover, often utilizes the most valuable parts of the trees. For example, construction of a typical 59-gallon oak wine barrel requires the consumption of two (2) full oak trees, which may be more than one hundred (100) years old.
With continuous use of wooden wine barrels over extended periods, the inner surfaces of the barrel becomes contaminated with wine residue and the much sought-after wood flavor becomes less and less available. As a result, oak wines barrels impart varying sensory characteristics to the wine according to the age of the barrel, making reproducibility from batch to batch difficult. Further, oak wine barrels when not in use are subject to attack by certain types of bacteria or fungi and frequently must be treated with suitable chemicals to avoid any serious contamination. Accordingly, it is sometimes necessary to discard not only used barrels, but unused contaminated wooden wine barrels as well, since chemical treatments are sometimes ineffective and can alter the taste of the wine. However, in a large winery where there are a costly number of barrels made by conventional cooperage methods, the replacement cost involved becomes economically prohibitive.
Various types of wine-aging containers made essentially from nonporous plastic materials, metals, or glass are found on the market today. However, these impervious containers are not suitable for the production of quality wines in large quantities. Moreover, the sought-after flavor imparted by wooden containers is lost in these usually disposable non-wooden containers and the reproducibility of other sensory properties of the wine is almost impossible to achieve. It may therefore be desirable to provide a wine barrel that is reusable and imparts characteristics of wooden wine barrels, but is not economically prohibitive.